NZ Football defend handshake snub

New Zealand women's football coach Tony Readings refuses to shake hands with the coah of the Chinese women's football team Hao Wei at the FIFA women's World Cup. Photo / Sky.

New Zealand Football are defending the coach of the Football Ferns who snubbed a post-game handshake with an opposing team's coach.

The Football Ferns' exit from the women's World Cup in Canada has been overshadowed by Tony Readings' refusal to shake his Chinese counterpart's hand.

NZF High Performance Director Fred de Jong says they understand his frustration and won't be taking further action.

"It's a highly competitive environment round that time and I think that's just one of those things that happens in any top level sport."

De Jong says while there were some questionable refereeing decisions in the draw with China, it's the joys of top level sport.

"Rightly or wrongly there's some things in each of the games where you can point to key moments that either went for them or against them, but in the final analysis, the objective that they set, they haven't got over the line."

De Jong also says they missed a High Performance Sport New Zealand indicator by quite some way and expect their funding to come under heavy scrutiny.

"What you can do and what you can achieve ultimately comes back to money. The support we've been given has been fantastic and you can see the development from this team over the last four to six years."

Ferns coach Tony Readings said he has a good relationship with the Chinese coach but didn't agree with his actions.

"I have always got on very well with the Chinese coach, very well. He's a very good coach," Readings said during his postgame press conference.

"His team is always so organized and we knew they were going to be organized today and they were. Just felt, you know, he obviously got sent to the stands for deliberately stopping our player from taking a quick throw in, and it's just something that I don't agree with.

"I would never go out of my way to do that to an opposition player. You've just got to let the players on the pitch do their business and the last thing we want is to influence things. We should always be backstage, not on stage. And I'm sure we'll meet again because we always play China a lot. We'll get on well again and there will be no problems at all."